The movie Memento directed by Christopher Nolan released on March 16, 2001 talks about the main character Lenoardo is looking for the one who murdered his wife at the night before their wedding, but he only can remember what happened ten minutes ago because of the brain injury caused “short term memory loss.” Lenoardo is dissatisfied with the polices who close the case because they think it is ordinary case happens everyday. Therefore, he vowed to track to the killer by himself, but his memory is fragmented, making this case extremely difficult to solve. He could only rely on the little things like notes, tattoos, snapshots to help him remember the past. But this system does not work because of its complexity. Whenever he found some valuable informations, he writes it down and record it in case he forget in the next minute. When Lenny knew that the murderer who really killed his wife was himself, he forced himself to change the memory, so he was going to find someone who killed his wife. He changed his memory because he was so painful and guilt.
This film uses flashbacks to combine the memories of the character, it was confusing to me at first and gets clear as it continues. This is a movie about amnesia using flashbacks. After reading this movie, I think director Nolan’s use of the editing technique is more complex than flashback; he plays the film editing technology to the Extreme. The film is more like a puzzle game for audience to play and solve. There are colored and black and white films in the film and the color film is flashback, and black and white film is the present in order. It is not easy to use brain to restore these clips to the original appearance. The director began to let the audience know the end, but I did not realize that the beginning was not the end because the end of a color fragment is the beginning of the previous. Looking back at the first piece of photos, the bullet back to the pistol that lens is a flashback hint. This director is set to let the audience want to know what happened before after reading every piece in order to make it more interesting. I want to figure out the relationship between the characters because I am kind of confused. However, When Leonardo tries to change his memory because he wants to escape the guilt from knowing he is the one who killed his wife, it raised a question about the memory stored in my brain. Are they 100% true? The original human brain in the preservation of memory is selective, to remove those unpleasant part, but what left is not necessarily true. In addition, the film sates if you had no hatred, life would have no purpose. Leonardo’s purpose was to find reasons to support his continued life. Although this reason is fictional, but it is also very important, the power of revenge can lead him to continue living, so that life has meaning, even if it does not make sense. It is essential that life has a purpose.
